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Category: Let’s take stuff apart

Daniel has a curiosity that most hackers like him share. And let’s face it, we like to take stuff apart. Some time ago, Daniel seen a previous teardown of the NEST thermostat by the ifixit guys. Inside there is an 802.15.4 radio transceiver that isn’t mentioned anywhere in the documentation this radio is commonly used in zigbee/xbee/mesh networks.

Daniel even went as far as to ask them what the radio was for, and got stonewalled. So Daniel decided to do his own teardown and probe at the inner workings of the thermostat even further. One of the goals was to see if the 802.15.4 radio was ever used without them saying so.

He notes at the end that the NEST guys have announced some new products like a smoke detector, and they have in the specs the 802.15.4 radio so it makes sense that the radio is there for future upgrades for the other devices to be able to talk, but I recommend watching the teardown video, it’s long but entertaining.

Check out the video after the break. Also more info over at Daniel’s site.

Isn’t it fun to take stuff apart and see how things are made ? Well Michael over at EDN likes to as well! He’s got one of those cheap-y eBay Bluetooth OBD-II adapters and while what’s inside isn’t much of a shocker, it’s still nice to look at how things are made.

Inside is a bunch of power regulation, a CAN bus transceiver, a Microchip PIC and a ready-made bluetooth module. Usually when you crack these cheap clones apart the soldering looks pretty shoddy, but this one looks pretty clean except for the Bluetooth module for some reason.